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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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 Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 4:46 pm Post subject: |
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It is conventional American doctrine to destroy command-and-control in any war, to destroy communications technology and hardware, to force national leaders, flag officers, and field commanders to transmit in the clear and then exploit the intel or simply hit them, etc. Give S. Hersh a Pulitzer for "speculating" and discovering what anyone who knows anything about American military thinking -- including anyone who watched the Iraqi War begin on television, and here I refer to the intended decapitating cruise-missile strike aimed at Saddam -- has known for decades.
This applies, however, in any war except those wars where nuclear weapons are involved -- presumably as the Iranian-American war would hypothetically unfold. If we destroy a nuclear-armed enemy's command-and-control system, which is also euphemism for killing political and military leaders in the initial attack or very soon thereafter, we destroy our ability to talk with them and we especially destroy said enemy's ability to stop the nuclear war from escalating according to whatever their standard-operating-procedures may be in such a situation. "When in doubt, follow your last order." That kind of thing. For that reason, in the case of a war with a nuclear-armed Tehran, we cannot and must not destroy its command-and-control system. Rather, we must destroy its nuclear weapons and/or render them inoperable immediately.
NAVFC might be right, then, at least in principle, even if he is making a wild-assed-guess. But I have seen no evidence that anyone, including Prophet Hersh, has cited showing they know for a fact what the American and/or Israeli contingency plans contain. |
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NAVFC
Joined: 10 May 2006
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| Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 6:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
It is conventional American doctrine to destroy command-and-control in any war, to destroy communications technology and hardware, to force national leaders, flag officers, and field commanders to transmit in the clear and then exploit the intel or simply hit them, etc. Give S. Hersh a Pulitzer for "speculating" and discovering what anyone who knows anything about American military thinking -- including anyone who watched the Iraqi War begin on television, and here I refer to the intended decapitating cruise-missile strike aimed at Saddam -- has known for decades.
This applies, however, in any war except those wars where nuclear weapons are involved -- presumably as the Iranian-American war would hypothetically unfold. If we destroy a nuclear-armed enemy's command-and-control system, which is also euphemism for killing political and military leaders in the initial attack or very soon thereafter, we destroy our ability to talk with them and we especially destroy said enemy's ability to stop the nuclear war from escalating according to whatever their standard-operating-procedures may be in such a situation. "When in doubt, follow your last order." That kind of thing. For that reason, in the case of a war with a nuclear-armed Tehran, we cannot and must not destroy its command-and-control system. Rather, we must destroy its nuclear weapons and/or render them inoperable immediately.
NAVFC might be right, then, at least in principle, even if he is making a wild-assed-guess. But I have seen no evidence that anyone, including Prophet Hersh, has cited showing they know for a fact what the American and/or Israeli contingency plans contain. |
The Hersh article was mentioned by Kuros.
Destroying Command and Control is done DURING WAR, but not a situation like this.
This would be a week long air campaign on Irans nucear facilities.
The closest thing we have to go on is Desert Fox, when Clinton ordered the bombin of several alleged Iraqi WMD sites.
Only the WMD sites were targetted. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 8:04 pm Post subject: Re: Israel asks U.S. for arms, air corridor to attack Iran |
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The OP
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The security aid package the United States has refused to give Israel for the past few months out of concern that Israel would use it to attack nuclear facilities in Iran included a large number of "bunker-buster" bombs, permission to use an air corridor to Iran, an advanced technological system and refueling planes. |
Didn't last long with the bunker busters.
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The US Department of Defense has notified Congress of a potential sale to Israel of 1,000 smart bombs capable of penetrating underground bunkers, which would likely be used in the event of a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.
The notification to Congress was made over the weekend by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the branch of the Pentagon responsible for evaluating foreign military sales. Congress has 30 days to object to the deal.
The deal is valued at $77 million and the principal contractor would be Boeing Integrated Defense Systems. |
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1221142470441&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull |
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NAVFC
Joined: 10 May 2006
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| Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 8:32 pm Post subject: Re: Israel asks U.S. for arms, air corridor to attack Iran |
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| mises wrote: |
The OP
| Quote: |
The security aid package the United States has refused to give Israel for the past few months out of concern that Israel would use it to attack nuclear facilities in Iran included a large number of "bunker-buster" bombs, permission to use an air corridor to Iran, an advanced technological system and refueling planes. |
Didn't last long with the bunker busters.
| Quote: |
The US Department of Defense has notified Congress of a potential sale to Israel of 1,000 smart bombs capable of penetrating underground bunkers, which would likely be used in the event of a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.
The notification to Congress was made over the weekend by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the branch of the Pentagon responsible for evaluating foreign military sales. Congress has 30 days to object to the deal.
The deal is valued at $77 million and the principal contractor would be Boeing Integrated Defense Systems. |
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1221142470441&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull |
I already posted that but the thing is those are NOT bunker buster bombs.
Bunker busters way 5,000 or 30,000 lbs.
they are the BLU-109 and BLU-118.
Those arwe the bombs Israel would need, not some 250 lb smart bombs |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 8:37 pm Post subject: |
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| Good to hear. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 9:15 pm Post subject: |
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| NAVFC: what is your background in security and/or military matters? Just curious and interested in contextualizing your voice here. |
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NAVFC
Joined: 10 May 2006
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| Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 9:42 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| NAVFC: what is your background in security and/or military matters? Just curious and interested in contextualizing your voice here. |
I was in the military, specialized in fire control and weapons delivery systems. |
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NAVFC
Joined: 10 May 2006
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| Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 9:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| NAVFC wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
| NAVFC wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
| NAVFC wrote: |
| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| NAVFC wrote: |
| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
The US needs a new strategy for dealing with Iran.
Essential to such a strategy is having the right weapons to send Iran the right message. |
We do.... bunker busters, of the 30000 lb and 5000 lb variety.
The following facilities will need to be destroyed:
The Reactors at Busherh, and Arak. Arak is a reactor that will output plutonium as a byproduct.
The uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.
The Uranium Conversion facility at Eshfahanz.
Also, B-2s modified to carry the new 30000lb bunker buster bomb will need to destroy the underground nuclear facilities at chalus.
This facility is however, staffed by experts from Russia, China and North Korea. However due to a desire to not be seen as helping Iran go nuclear, i doubt those 3 nations will make much of a fuss at the death of their personnel
there is also a Nuclear weapons development facility near the Karin river called Darkhovin.
Iran has been offered incentive after incentive after incentive, and each time they basiclly tell the international community to f-off.
2010 is getting close.
We cant afford to just wait around and do nothing. If Iran isnt going to listen to diplomacy then military force must be considered.
Alot of people shout diplomacy, diplomacy" without even stopping to consider that diplomacy has been ongoing and been failing. Lucrative diplomacy all kinds of offers being made.
if diplomacy fails, then the longer we wait the more risk we assume with a strike (such as from radiation poisoning) |
Bunker busters are not powerful enough..
And in fact air power probably isn't powerful enough to knock out Iran.
Israel couldn't knock out Hizzbollah with airpower.
Nuclear weapons are a taboo.
The US needs something else. Something much , much more powerful than bunker busters.
The the US would be able put Iran on notice. They will not be able to use nuclear weapons to save themselves from the consequences of sponsoring terror.
At the same time bombing Iran right now would empower the hardliners for another 20 years. We don't know who is going to lead Iran when its supreme leader dies. |
The new 30000lb bunker buster is more then adequate for destroying Iran's hardened nuclear facilties. The goal of any strike wouldnt be to "knock out" Iran, but to destroy their nuclear production capabilities.
As far as the note about sponsoring terror, Iran has been doing that for years vis a vis, Hezbollah without many consequences so I doubt they are too concerned. |
According to Seymour Hersh, yes, the goal of an Israeli strike on Iran would be precisely to knock out Iranian command and control. They would strike Tehran political and military targets in the hopes of paralyzing the country and allowing perhaps for a more extended campaign against their extensive and protected nuclear research sites and missile facilities. Their nuclear production capabilities, such as little as we know about them, are more spread out and protected than Osiraq was in the early 80s. |
Hersh? since when is a guy who as of late has made some crazy claims,
(such as that US Navy seals would attack fellow americans..explained later in this post)
and Seymour Hersh has very little credbility.
1. His guessing is speculation at best. No Israeli official has ever briefed him on their contingency plans. He hasnt been to any planning meetings. Nothing. He has no credibility. Hes like the boy who called wolf.
He has said seevral times about both the US and Israel that well be going to war this month or that month and sure enough it doesnt happen.
Especially when he said the US was going to us B-61 thermonuclear bombs on Iran..
That in itself shows him non credible on this issue, as the B-61 thermonuclear bomb is a gravity bomb that detonates on the surface not underground
Or Hersh's claim that Cheney planned a operation to start a war by having US navy SEALs dress as Iranian PT boat crews and then start fights with US Ships.
Those kind of crazy claims , made without any evidence whatsoever, reduce Hersh's credibility to nil. |
I'm getting the sense that you'd impeach any source that wasn't politically aligned with your own views.
Listen, unlike some of Hersh's other claims, this one makes sense. You take out command & control and darken the picture for the Iranians. One assumes that Iranian C&C isn't as stable or reinforced as, say, American C&C. Paralysis of C&C might also have some salutory effects re: Hezbollah reaction, given how close Hezbollah and Iran are. Nevertheless, I have at least one source for my conception of likely Israeli strategy. And I'm very doubtful that the Israelis, as reality-based as they are shrewd (as opposed to this administration pre-2006), would simply try another Osiraq operation given the manifest differences of Iran's situation today from Iraq's nuclear program in the early 1980s. |
wtf? No.
Hersh makes ridiculous claims without proof. And your response, is
"I'm getting the sense that you'd impeach any source that wasn't politically aligned with your own views. "
heh. Im sorry but outrageous claims take evidence. Im not going to believe soemthing simply because some guy who has never been in a position to know jack squat and has no proof says so.
Hersh is alot like the national enquirer. makes outrageous claims without proof. little credbility. it isnt about political leanings, I am a person of evidence.
It doesnt matter either way. Under any circumstances, Iran must not be allowed to go nuclear. |
You mean outrageous claims like "sanctions haven't been working?" Where was your evidence for that?
The reason I'm being ballyhoed is because I gave a name as a source for my claims, whereas I've not seen a damned thing forthcoming from you as for why diplomacy is impossible, the sanctions are not working, and Hersh is a crazy, crazy man.
Iran halted nuclear weapons program in 2003
NAVFC, is this source too lefty for you? How about you, Gopher? |
That so called NIE was a attempt by the CIA to take the presure off the admisntration to bomb Iran, which at that time it was more so then now.
The adminstration was very surprised when that NIE came out..they didnt know anything about it. Which I find very strange since the US President receives a daily intel briefing, but yet still claimed Iran was in pursuit of nuclear weapons
Further, foreign intelligence agencies such as in Israel, China and much of Europe all say Iran is still out for the bomb.
theyll be nuclear capable in 2010 or hortly there after
and evidence sanctions arent working?
well lets see..the purpose of sanctions was to get Iran to freeze its uranoum enrichment... after 3 rounds of sanctions, when ever uranium enrichment is brought up as an issue, Iran still tells us to f-off
Conclusion? sanctions arent working. A little sense goes a long way. |
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NAVFC
Joined: 10 May 2006
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| Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 9:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| Gopher wrote: |
So W. Bush and D. Cheney want a war with Iran and S. Hersh has heard about it. So what? Let me know when you hear something about anyone at all who is prepared to follow them into such a war. Last I heard, in fact, they had failed even to succeed in moving another carrier into the Persian Gulf. OP's story strongly suggests that this pattern has indeed become entrenched.
What is the issue here? |
The only reason I brought Hersh's theory up, was that I was disputing NAVFC's characterization that an attack would be on the nuclear facilities themselves.
I simply was trying to show that my understanding of the Israeli plan, just a plan!, everyone makes and draws up these kinds of plans!, would be to knock out C&C.
It really has nothing to do with the Bush administration at all. It certainly has nothing to do with whether actor A or B is aggressive, or mean, or bad. It was discussion about what the Israelis would do if A) they had a chance to airstrike Iran, B) and felt they had to take it.
That's why NAVFC's hue and cry about Hersh being a left-wing nutball was so wierd. Because I was not making any kind of point outside of the tactics of a supposed, ideal raid. And when I backed up and decided that I didn't need Hersh, he just wouldn't let it go.
*beep* it. I'm done with this thread. |
Also dont put words in my mouth Kuro.
NO WHERE in any of my posts will you find the words, "left wing nutball"
Your characterization of how i view Hersh is totally eschewed.
That reduces your own credbility as far as im concerned.
I didnt bring up politics, you did.
I have been discussing this from a pure military perspective until you brought up the politics. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 9:59 pm Post subject: |
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Re: the NIE.
Not strange at all, NAVFC. The W. Bush Administration played the intelligence community on Iraq. And not only the DCI but also the Secretary of State at the time, more or less, depending on how one reads it, took the fall. Both were very, very well-regarded in the foreign policy establishment and the intelligence community. Many felt manipulated and robbed.
With this NIE, as I read it, someone rather high in the chain-of-command somewhere in the intelligence community took the initiative and contributed to putting the brakes on W. Bush and D. Cheney's saber-rattling. R. Gates and W. Fallon and others did the rest.
As I have suggested before here, W. Bush has pushed, stressed, and tested American civil-military relations like no administration ever. Will make for a very interesting historical project in twenty, twenty-five years or so, once we start seeing declassified White House staff files and other papers at the soon-to-be-established W. Bush Presidential Library. |
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NAVFC
Joined: 10 May 2006
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| Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 10:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
Re: the NIE.
Not strange at all, NAVFC. The W. Bush Administration played the intelligence community on Iraq. And not only the DCI but also the Secretary of State at the time, more or less, depending on how one reads it, took the fall. Both were very, very well-regarded in the foreign policy establishment and the intelligence community. Many felt manipulated and robbed.
With this NIE, as I read it, someone rather high in the chain-of-command somewhere in the intelligence community took the initiative and contributed to putting the brakes on W. Bush and D. Cheney's saber-rattling. R. Gates and W. Fallon and others did the rest.
As I have suggested before here, W. Bush has pushed, stressed, and tested American civil-military relations like no administration ever. Will make for a very interesting historical project in twenty, twenty-five years or so, once we start seeing declassified White House staff files and other papers at the soon-to-be-established W. Bush Presidential Library. |
Sounds like about what happened. I'm sure alot of anger was expressed behind the scenes too when it came out. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 10:49 pm Post subject: |
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| Some have the authority to declassify dox at their discretion. Some can consult with Senate oversight and back themselves up. A lot of things can explain it. These kinds of things represent a highly-nuanced artform in Washington. I am certain the President and his No. 2 did not like it. But in this case that is too bad. Outmaneuvered. I strongly suspect his own cabinet (R. Gates, who knows a thing or two about NIEs) indirectly involved, whether he likes it or not, and it is for his own good in any case. |
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